Nigeria To Hold Bid Round For Marginal Oil Fields – NNPC GMD

The Group Managing Director (GMD), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, has said Nigeria will hold a bid  round for marginal.oil fields soon.  

Kyari made the disclosure on Tuesday  in a virtual meeting on government fiscal policy decisions which was organised by the Ministry of Finance and the UK Department for International Development Partnership. 

He said during the meeting  that a licensing round would be held  on marginal fields, which would encourage local participation.  

“Marginal fields by their very nature, require very small-scale investment. Countries normally do this (licensing round) to encourage local participation and this local participation is usually funded by local borrowings because the scale of investment is not huge.

“So, you can typically do a marginal field bid round even when oil prices are low because their costs of production are usually lower; they don’t need huge capital outlay. It is possible to do a marginal field bid round this period,” he said.

 “A substantive, full-scale licensing round, where you require foreign investments,” Kyari said, was not possible.   

 “Where you require foreign investment … this is not a good time… The appetite would be very very low,” Kyari said on licensing rounds, citing the dwindling oil prices. 

The country’s  projected revenue from signature bonuses has been cut to N350 billion from N 939 billion earlier projected for 2020 due to the delay in license  renewals, the GMD said